Ise And Fall Of Extreme Championship Wrestling

Download or read book The Rise & Fall of ECW written by Thom Loverro and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-05-22 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Independent wrestling promotions were once the norm all across the country. However, with the rise of World Wrestling Entertainment and the creation of World Championship Wrestling -- out of three Southern promotions -- the possibility of an independent succeeding grew fainter and fainter. As the nineties began, independents were looking for creative ways to survive. In the East, several banded together to share cost and talent; they were known as Eastern Championship Wrestling. Based out of a warehouse in Philadelphia that stored parade floats and hosted bingo, this promotion seemed doomed to be just one more ninety-day wonder. When they hired a brash New Yorker, Paul Heyman, he warned Eastern Championship Wrestling that the job was just temporary. He would come in, shake up a lot of the wrestlers, and then leave. But what Heyman did redefined professional wrestling in the nineties. What he created was a company that dared to push the boundaries of sports entertainment. What he created became Extreme Championship Wrestling. As the person responsible for booking -- who was going to wrestle and who was going to win -- Heyman dared to break with tradition. Rather than relying on local talent and down-and-out veterans to draw in crowds, he created new characters and story lines that would appeal to the core wrestling fans: eighteen- to twenty-four- year-old men. Paul also realized that to persuade them to come, you had to get their interest and keep it. You had to offer the fans more than just the match. ECW became known for the interview, the shoot. Heyman got to know each wrestler's style, and in their interviews he would encourage them to speak from their hearts. When it came to the matches, ECW broke even farther from the mainstream. Tables, ladders, chairs, barbed wire, and even frying pans were used with abandon. Wrestlers not wanting to be topped put their bodies on the line, taking ever greater risks, daring to jump, leap, and fall from places never tried before. ECW matches became the stuff of legend. Word spread as savvy wrestling fans began talking about the promotion and exchanging tapes. To keep the buzz building, wrestlers used the age-old trick of taunting the fans, and ECW fans responded in kind. By including the fans in the shows, ECW attracted a rabid, cult-like following that is still going strong today. For nearly a decade, ECW redefined professional wrestling with a reckless, brutal, death-defying, and often bloody style that became synonymous with "hardcore." Through extensive interviews with former ECW talent and management -- Paul Heyman, Mick Foley, Tazz, Tommy Dreamer, Rob Van Dam, and many more -- The Rise & Fall of ECW reveals what made this upstart company from Philadelphia great -- and what ultimately led to its demise.

Download or read book Hardcore History written by Scott E. Williams and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-03-08 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) was one extreme contradiction on top of another. An incredibly influential—but never profitable—company in the world of professional wrestling in the 1990s, it portrayed itself as the ultimate in anti-authority rebellion, but its leadership was working covertly with the World Wrestling Federation and the World Championship Wrestling. Most of all, it blurred the line between reality and the fantasy world of professional wrestling. Hardcore History: The Extremely Unauthorized Story of ECW offers a frank, balanced look at the evolution of ECW starting before its early days as a Philadelphia-area independent group and extending past its death in 2001. Featuring dozens of interviews with fans, officials, business partners, and the wrestlers themselves, this is a very balanced account of this bizarre company—and it’s sure to be extremely controversial for fans and critics of ECW, and wrestling, alike. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports—books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team. In addition to books on popular team sports, we also publish books for a wide variety of athletes and sports enthusiasts, including books on running, cycling, horseback riding, swimming, tennis, martial arts, golf, camping, hiking, aviation, boating, and so much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Download or read book Turning the Tables written by John Lister and published by Exposure Publishing. This book was released on 2005-10-01 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ECW was the upstart promotion which revolutionised the wrestling industry. Turning The Tables is the first published history of the company which grew from a run-down bingo hall to become a national pay-per-view competitor... then crashed in a sea of debt. John Lister (author of Slamthology) gives an independent, objective and informative account that reveals hidden secrets and shatters common myths. From a little-known truth about ECW's most famous feud to a blow-by-blow account of what really happened in Revere, this book will give you the true story behind America's most controversial wrestling group.

Download or read book New Jack written by New Jack, and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2020-02-24 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You may have cheered him. You may have booed him out of the building. But until now, you've never really known "The Most Dangerous Man in Wrestling." For the first time, Jerome "New Jack" Young opens up about his rise to stardom in Extreme Championship Wrestling. From his crazed dives off balconies and scaffolds to his bloody weapons matches that trampled the line between reality and entertainment, this candid memoir reveals the man behind the infamy, with new disclosures about the Mass Transit incident, the brutal beat-down of Gypsy Joe, and the stabbing of a fellow wrestler in Florida. Beyond the gimmicks that united white supremacists and the NAACP against him, New Jack discusses his violent youth that nearly led him to a life of crime, his career as a bounty hunter, a near-fatal drug addiction, the last months of ECW, and his place in wrestling history.

Download or read book The Rise & Fall of ECW written by Thom Loverro and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-05-22 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the rise and fall of Extreme Championship Wrestling, and how that organization revolutionized sports entertainment.

Download or read book Bleeding Was Only Half the Job written by Jon Barber and published by . This book was released on 2021-07-19 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Read about the Rise of Xtreme Pro Wrestling (XPW) from some of those who lived through one of the most tumultuous times in professional wrestling. The tragedy and triumph of the late professional wrestling organization is explored in this unofficial retrospective. XPW carved a niche during a post-Monday Night Wars era that has since never been replicated!

Download or read book Controversy Creates Cash written by Eric Bischoff and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2006 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under Eric Bishoff's watch as president of WCW, the company went head to head with Vince McMahon's WWE and beat them at their own game before WCW itself spectacularly imploded. But by then, Bishoff had made an indelible mark on televised wrestling, producing shows that had appeared more dangerous, more sexy, and more edgy than anything that had come before. He did this to such an extent that in 2002, McMahon seized the chance to bring in his former nemesis as General Manager of RAW; since then, true to form, Bishoff regularly surprises fans with matches that would once have been unthinkable for television. In this revelatory look at his life and career, Bishoff frankly discusses the things he did, both right and wrong, as he helped shape the sports entertainment industry into today's billion dollar business.